God's Covenant Faithfulness Overcomes Costco Theology

And good morning, everyone. As Bob said, my name is Michael Cantrell,
and it is a joy for my wife,
my girls, and I to be part of Redeemer, and it is certainly a privilege to handle the Word this
morning.
As we continue our series, In the book of Judges,
it's appropriate at this point for me to warn you, do not get your theology from Costco.
Now, I'm not saying don't buy theology books at Costco.
What I mean is don't derive your experience, excuse me,
don't derive your theology from your experience of going. to Costco. After all,
at Costco, in exchange for the goods that you get,
you have to dole out an equivalent payment.
And to be sure, if Costco doesn't have what you need,
it's totally legit to go buy it from Sam's Club or somewhere else.
Let me broaden out just a little bit.
Costco theology can start even before you get in the door.
Have you ever gone to Costco when the parking lot is packed,
but you somehow immediately snag a great parking spot,
and then you make this quip, I must be living right. And hopefully you're joking,
but there in a nutshell is your transactional Costco theology.
Let me broaden out some more to illustrate this a little more generally from my own life because
Costco theology can be more insidious. When I was 13 years old,
I was a pastor's kid. One Sunday, I forget my tithe.
And so, I have someone drive me to the church treasurer's house so I could give him the money
because I vaguely think that it could give me some kind of insurance against bad things happening
that week. Or I'm a young man of 22,
and I constantly swing between pride and despair because I believe my acceptance with God is
secured or undermined based on my performance over the previous week.
Finally, I'm 28, and I am devastated at news that my wife and I will not be able to conceive a
child. And I assume that the gospel response is,
just have more faith.
Now, it isn't that I had not been taught. I was in church every Sunday since I was five or six
years old, and a lot of times besides Sunday, Wednesday nights, I was up there all the time.
Despite being taught, I still imbibed a transactional theology from the culture around me,
including the church culture.
One perennial feature of our fallen human condition is that we prefer transactions over trust in
the Lord. And that is nowhere clearer than in Judges chapters 10,
11, and 12. This portion of Scripture deals with three judges named Tola,
Jair, and Jephthah.
the first two, but we're going to spend our time with Jephthah, really, this morning. And as we
will see, Jephthah was disinherited by his brothers,
cast out by the elders of his community, and he became a leader of a violent gang.
He was contentious, rash, and driven to secure his own inheritance.
But by God's grace, this dispossessed heir,
became the defender of Israel's territorial inheritance.
But Jephthah had imbibed too much of his theology from the pagan culture around him.
And in the grip of a transactional mindset, he foolishly vowed to sacrifice whatever came through
his door upon his return home. And shockingly, it turns out,
It was his daughter,
his only child. Now, Jephthah is not a role model,
but his tragic story ultimately points us to the true judge and deliverer,
Jesus Christ.
Our passage this morning is lengthy. It's Judges 10, verse 1 to 12,
verse 7. Now, I'm going to cover all of that, but we're not going to read all of that this morning.
We'll read most of it. So, I won't ask you to stand, but please do bow with me.
Father, all is vain unless Your Spirit meets with us this morning.
So, open our eyes. that we may see wonderful things in Your Word this morning by the power of Your
Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.
So we will begin reading with chapter 10, verse 6.
did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth,
the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites,
and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him.
So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he sold them into the hand of the
Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites. And they crushed and oppressed the people of Israel
that year. For 18 years, they oppressed all the people of Israel who were beyond the Jordan and the
land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. And the Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight also
against Judah and against Benjamin and against the house of Ephraim. so that Israel was severely
distressed.
And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord saying, we have sinned against you because we have
forsaken our God and have served the Baals. And the Lord said to the people of Israel,
did I not save you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites,
from the Ammonites and from the Philistines, the Sidonians also? And the Amalekites and the
Mayonites oppressed you, and you cried out to me, and I saved you out of their hand.
Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore,
I will save you no more. Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen.
Let them save you in the time of your distress.
And the people of Israel said to the Lord, We have sinned.
Do to us whatever seems good to you, only please deliver us this day.
So they put away the foreign gods among them and served the Lord. And he became impatient over the
misery of Israel.
Then the Ammonites were called to arms, and they encamped in Gilead. And the people of Israel came
together, and they encamped at Mizpah. And the people, the leaders of Gilead,
said one to another, Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites?
He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.
Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute.
Gilead was the father of Jephthah, and Gilead's wife also bore him sons.
And when his wife's sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him,
You shall not have an inheritance in our father's house, for you are the son of another woman.
Then Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob, and worthless fellows collected
around Jephthah and went out with him.
After a time, the Ammonites made war against Israel. And when the Ammonites made war against
Israel, the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah from the land of Tob.
And they said to Jephthah, come and be our leader that we may fight against the Ammonites.
But Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, did you not hate me and drive me out of my father's
house? Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?
And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, That is why we have turned to you now,
that you may go with us and fight against the Ammonites and be our head over all the inhabitants of
Gilead.
Jephthah said to the elders of Gilead, If you bring me home again to fight against the Ammonites,
and the Lord gives them over to me, I will be your head. And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah,
The Lord be witness between us if we do not do as you say.
So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and leader over them.
And Jephthah spoke all his words before the Lord.
Now, in what follows, Jephthah exchanges messages with the Ammonite king where they debate Israel's
right to inheritance in the land. We will pick back up in verse 27 where Jephthah says to the
Ammonite king,
I therefore have not sinned against you, and you do me wrong by making war on me.
The Lord, the judge, decide this day between the people of Israel and the people of Ammon.
But the king of the Ammonites did not listen to Jephthah, did not listen to the words of Jephthah
that he sent to him.
Then the spirit of the Lord was upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh,
and passed on to Mizpah of Gilead. And from Mizpah of Gilead,
he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said,
If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to
meet me, when I return in peace from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord's.
And I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his
hand. And he struck them from Aror to the neighborhood of Mineth, 20 cities and as far as Abel
-Karamim with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah, and behold, His daughter came out to meet him with
tambourines and dances. She was his only child.
Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter.
And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, Alas, my daughter, you have brought me
very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me.
for I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow. And she said to him,
My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord. Do to me according to what has gone out of your
mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites. So she said to her
father, Let this thing be done for me. Leave me alone two months.
that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.
So he said, Go. Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed,
she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. And at the end of two months,
she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made.
She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went year
by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, four days in the year.
This is the Word of the Lord.
The main truth from our text this morning is that God's faithfulness overcomes our tendency.
to prefer transactions over trust in Him. I'll say that again. God's faithfulness overcomes our
tendency to prefer transactions over trust in Him. And we'll break that down into three points.
A transactional mindset cannot explain God's covenant faithfulness.
It cannot sustain God's covenant community,
nor can it obtain God's covenant blessing.
And so our text first focuses on the vertical relationship between Israel and the Lord.
And we see that a transactional mindset cannot explain God's covenant faithfulness.
Now, Israel's downward spiral has reached terminal velocity at this point.
The culture is now pervasively paganized.
Instead of turning just to the Baals and the Ashtaroth, as in the previous cycles of misery,
chapter 10 verse 6 lists seven groups of foreign gods,
including also the gods of Syria, of Sidon, Moab, the Ammonites,
and the Philistines. Now, Judges is a carefully written book,
and seven... is the Hebrew number of completion. So the text here is showing us a complete
apostasy.
So the Lord's anger was kindled against Israel, and He allowed the Philistines and the Ammonites to
severely oppress Israel. Verse 8 says,
the Ammonites crushed and oppressed Israel. Can you imagine?
What it would have to be like for those words to apply? They crushed and oppressed Israel.
This is the exact language the Lord had used in Deuteronomy 28.33 to predict the suffering that
would come from Israel's disobedience.
And this goes on for 18 years. Some of you are not even 18 years old yet.
Can you imagine?
Now Israel... cries out to the Lord. But notice their selective confession in verse 10.
They say, we have forsaken our God and served the Baals. Israel makes no confession concerning the
other foreign gods. They're trying to get deliverance on the cheap.
Verse 11, the Lord's not having it.
He recounts the deliverance He gave to Israel from seven of their oppressors.
Now, there were more than seven, but seven again shows that He has made complete deliverance for
the people of Israel. But now Israel has yet again wickedly turned the Lord's mercy into an
occasion. for sin.
Jonathan Edwards once observed,
there is something peculiarly heinous in sinning against the mercy of God more than His other
attributes. There is such base and horrid ingratitude in being the worst to God because He is a
being of infinite goodness. and grace.
And Israel's heinous wickedness elicits something we don't see very often,
sarcasm from the mouth of our righteous Lord.
Verse 14, go, cry out to the gods whom you have chosen.
Let them save you in the time of your distress.
Israel's anemic response further reveals, the depth of its apostasy.
Verse 15, we have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to you, only please deliver us this day.
Now, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with this plea?
Well, typically, when Israel has egregiously sinned,
they appeal for mercy on the basis of the Lord's promises in His covenant with Abraham.
Like in Exodus 32, for example, after the golden calf debacle,
there the Lord tells Moses, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume
them. But Moses implored the Lord, his God,
and said, relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham.
But here, Israel's generic plea shows them behaving like they had completely forgotten the
privileges they had as the Lord's covenant people.
They are Israelites, and to them...
the adoption, the glory, the covenants,
the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.
To
them belong the patriarchs, and one day from their race,
according to the flesh, would come the Christ. who is God over all,
blessed forever. Amen.
They forgot it all.
Dale Ralph Davis, in his commentary on Judges, captures this truth succinctly.
Amnesia produces apostasy.
Believer here this morning, or maybe watching online,
do your actions reflect your knowledge of who God is.
Do you remember who you are in Christ? And do you act accordingly?
God, the Father, has made you His beloved child.
To you belongs the adoption,
the glory,
the covenant of grace. To you belongs the finished work of Jesus Christ.
the indwelling power of God's Spirit. And one day,
Christ will return, and the lover of your soul,
the one who is faithful and true, will make all things new.
I
encourage you to dive deep into the Scriptures to know Him more.
Besides the Scriptures, I'll give you one more book recommendation. That's J.I.
Packer's Knowing God.
Packer's book is rightfully considered a classic of Christian devotion. And if you haven't read it,
perhaps it's time. I know many of you have read it. And now if you have read it,
dive back even deeper into Scripture,
as both the Westminster and the 1689 confessions say, be diligent in stirring up the grace of God
that is in you. I love that image. God gives you grace. Stir up that grace that is within you.
Now, if you are not trusting in the Lord,
you do not have the promises.
Beg. God to grant you true repentance.
Otherwise, the most you can do is respond the way Israel did.
Verse 16, with nowhere else to turn, Israel offers a transactional quote-unquote repentance by
putting away the foreign gods. Verse 16 says, the Lord became impatient by Israel's misery.
Now, the Hebrew idiom underlying the phrase, he became impatient,
is his soul was short.
K. Lawson Younger Jr. explains that this phrase expresses the frustration,
exasperation, and anger in the face of an intolerable situation.
Yahweh is dismissing the Israelite actions as further evidence of their iniquitous condition and
manipulative ways.
Now, it's safe to say that if the Lord Himself operated with a transactional mindset,
the nation of Israel would be a mere footnote in history.
The Lord easily could have resolved Israel's intolerable situation by simply making an end of
Israel, and He would have been perfectly within His rights to do so.
Why did He not do that?
Well, Israel's transactional repentance certainly wasn't the cause.
No, it's because the Lord remembered His covenant.
As Moses told Israel, he would back in Deuteronomy 4.31.
For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the
covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
And the writer of Psalm 106, looking back at this time in Israel's history,
explains. Many times He delivered them, but they were rebellious in their purposes and were brought
low through their iniquity. Nevertheless, He looked upon their distress when He heard their cry.
For their sake, He remembered His covenant and relented according to the abundance,
the abundance of His steadfast love, the abundance of His steadfast love.
Now make no mistake, the Lord's covenant with Israel included real covenant obligations on Israel's
part.
But the Lord's commitment to preserve His redemptive purpose rested not on Israel's performance,
but on His steadfast love. Praise God!
that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. Do not,
like Israel, presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience,
for these things are meant to bring us to repentance.
The focus of the text now moves from the vertical relationship with Israel's covenant Lord to the
horizontal relationships among God's covenant people.
And we see that a transactional mindset cannot sustain God's covenant community.
We see the breakdown in covenant relationships right off the bat. Within the region of Gilead,
there was an individual man named Gilead. Gilead had a wife and sons,
but he broke his marriage covenant with a prostitute who bore a son that he named Jephthah.
Now, as with King David later on, Gilead's adultery bred family conflict.
In chapter 11 verse 2, when Gilead's other sons grow up,
they drive Jephthah out saying, you shall not have an inheritance in our father's house.
And apparently even the elders concurred. and Jephthah being disinherited and driven out of the
land.
Now, an inheritance was everything in those days.
With no inheritance in the land, Jephthah has no status,
no identity, no future.
Jephthah's effort to secure his inheritance and legacy sets up the central dynamic of the remaining
verses.
And so we see that the Ammonites, they come against Israel, and they camp in Gilead.
And the elders of Gilead find themselves in a desperate situation with no one to lead them.
Now, in the flow of Judges, it's a bit of a shock at this point to find no leaders.
To see why, take a look back at chapter 10, verses 1 through 5,
which is right before where we picked up our reading. Those verses tell of two judges.
The first one is Tola, son of Pua. It says he rose to save Israel,
and he judged Israel 23 years. And that's about all we know about Tola.
The second one is Jair the Gileadite. Verse 4 says that Jair,
who was from Gilead, had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys,
and they had 30 cities in Gilead. Now, many sons in this time was a sign of influence and strength.
Riding a donkey was a sign of wealth. and high status.
Think about the sad reality that not a single one of these 30 men was fit to lead the people.
In that light, it's really pathetic that no leader could be found.
Notice also that in the other cycles, the Lord raises the deliverer,
but not here. No one, not a single person, calls upon the Lord for guidance in choosing a leader.
Instead, Gilead's elders usurp the Lord's role, and they settle on Jephthah,
and the haggling that follows reflects their transactional mindset.
Notice the elders' initial inquiry in chapter 10, verse 18.
the initial inquiry is that whoever saves them will be head of all those living in Gilead.
In other words, the one who saves them will be their tribal chief over everybody. But when they go
to Jephthah in chapter 11 verse 6, they make the lesser offer of leader that is merely commander of
the army.
the elders are looking for a bargain. They're trying to get a deliverer on the cheap.
It's only after Jephthah objects that the elders then raise their offer back to its initial level
in chapter 11, verse 8. Now, Jephthah himself drives a hard bargain.
In verse 9, he demands to be brought home. That is,
to have his inheritance reinstated.
Now, no one here is a role model, but the elder's behavior is especially disturbing.
And I just want to pause here for a moment and take an opportunity. As a body at Redeemer here,
we have elders. We are led by a group of elders. And I want to encourage you to pray for our
elders. We are blessed to have godly men serving on our elder board,
and they desperately depend on the Spirit of God to shepherd the flock of God.
They do work that most of us never know about. Pray that God will guard them and guide them.
and grant them discernment and wisdom and unity,
and submit to their leadership.
Encourage them and thank God for them because they are gifts of God's Spirit to the church.
What's clear in Judges is that everyone from the elders on down have developed a transactional
mindset not only to their covenant Lord, but also to their covenant community.
A man named Edward Banfield wrote a book titled The Moral Basis of a Backward Society.
He coined the term all-moral familism. All-moral familism is an extreme form of the attitude that
says, if everybody's looking out for themselves, I would be a fool. not to do the same.
It's characterized by weak communal bonds, low social trust, and a reluctance to sacrifice for the
larger community. Israel has fallen into a similar mindset on the national level.
Do you recall when Trey preached about Gideon?
Do you remember when the Ephraimites got mad when Gideon didn't call them to go fight?
At that point in time, Gideon was able to pacify them by kind of flattering them, but he was able
to pacify them. Well, now in chapter 12, verse 1,
right after the text that we read, we see the Ephraimites get upset again for essentially the same
reason.
This time they said Jephthah didn't call to fight them, excuse me,
this time they said Jephthah didn't call them to fight the Ammonites. But Israel's society is more
disintegrated now than it was even in the time of Gideon. The people's transactional mindset has
created a lack of trust.
Accordingly, in verses 2 through 3, Jephthah explains to the Ephraimites,
basically, he says, I called you, but I realized I couldn't trust or depend on you,
so I took matters into my own hands. And this enraging...
Ephraimites, and Israel descends into the disaster of civil war.
Verse 6 says that Jephthah and his men killed 42,000 of their Ephraimite brothers.
Now, it is sobering to realize that this is not the last sermon in this series.
It is sobering to realize that Israel has still not yet reached the bottom of its downward spiral.
Now, transactional behavior toward other people is an enduring problem,
not just for Israel, but for us as well. Why is that?
I could give you several reasons. I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to give you two.
One is that transactions are predictable, and they're easy to understand,
and they allow you to deal at arm's length.
Covenant relationships, on the other hand, are intimate,
and they leave you vulnerable, and that can be uncomfortable.
Secondly,
transactional behavior is an enduring problem because sometimes you literally have to go to Costco.
To get groceries, it's entirely appropriate and necessary to make transactions.
Everyday life involves working for your salary,
signing contracts, and making exchanges, and sometimes justice requires retribution.
The problem comes when we sinfully apply transactional logic to our personal and covenantal
relationships. Our marriages, our families,
and our church, they all suffer when our mindset is,
what return am I getting on my investment?
What if God dealt with you on that basis?
Covenant community, requires moving beyond calculating utility to faithfulness to particular people
come what may.
A covenant community is one whose members bear one another's burdens and care for one another.
Just think about what kind of culture are our children imbibing here at Redeemer?
A community is one whose members bear one another's burdens and care for each other. Is that
something you're involved in?
If not, I want to encourage you. Think about someone who's not necessarily in a position to
reciprocate and take a concrete step to seek that person's deepest welfare fulfillment and joy.
Now, you say, well, I don't have the means to do that. Well, you have something better.
You can earnestly and consistently pray for that person.
God has the means.
You have the Word of God that you can share with that person.
You can offer words of encouragement to that person. I still derive strength from words of
encouragement. Little words of encouragement no one would ever remember, but words of encouragement
that I received years ago, I still derive strength from those.
These are all things we can do and we're called to do as the body of Christ.
So how is this kind of life, how is this covenant community sustained?
Well, we can find the answer laid out for us in 1 John 4, 9 through 11.
It says, God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
Now, at the risk of pointing out something glaringly obvious, live there is a plural verb.
God sent His only Son into the world so that we together live through Him.
And this is love. John says, not that we have loved God,
but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation,
the wrath satisfier, the atoning sacrifice,
the one who brings reconciliation. He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
That's the basis for sustaining covenant community.
Beloved, if God so loved us, John said, we also ought to love one another.
Now, from the vertical to the horizontal, the passage now moves to the personal level.
And we see that a transactional mindset cannot obtain God's covenant blessing.
Notice the irony. In God's providence,
Jephthah, The dispossessed heir becomes the defender of Israel's territorial inheritance.
In chapter 11, verse 29, we see God acting for the first time in the narrative.
He's graciously putting His Spirit upon Jephthah. Now,
in the Old Testament, the Spirit clothing a person, doesn't mean that that person is particularly
spiritual or moral. Rather, it's a special divine enablement for some purpose.
And here, the Spirit enables Jephthah to travel through Gilead and Manasseh.
This was likely for recruiting, for morale building.
Notice in verse 29, The phrase, passed through,
and then twice, passed on, and then in verse 32,
crossed over, these all translate the same Hebrew phrase.
So, these are four phases of one movement.
for which God's Spirit is the motive force. And this all builds up to the climax of the Lord's
giving the Ammonites into Jephthah's hands.
Unfortunately, this movement of God's Spirit is interrupted by Jephthah's vow in verses 30 through
31 to sacrifice, as he says, whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me.
when I return, but only if the Lord gives him victory.
Jephthah is trying to secure victory, enhance his own legacy through a quid pro quo arrangement.
Jephthah is acting like a pagan, but notice he's...
not acting like a pagan because he's worshiping the wrong god. He's acting like a pagan because
he's treating the Lord the way pagans treat their gods.
Now, we're told that the Lord subdues the Ammonites.
And Jephthah returns home victorious.
And who comes out of his door to greet him?
His precious daughter.
She comes out with dancing. with joy until
her eyes meet the anguished face of her father,
although it is a sin to break a vow. See Numbers 30 verse 2.
Many scholars argue that under the law of Leviticus 27, 1 through 8,
Jephthah could have redeemed his daughter.
In any case, Jephthah's sacrifice is directly condemned by Deuteronomy 12.31 and 18.10,
which expressly forbid child sacrifice.
Now, if you go back and you read Jephthah's debate with the Ammonite king,
you will see that Jephthah is no ignoramus. He likely knew the law.
But in the grip... of the Costco theology that he had imbibed from the culture.
He declares in verse 35 that he cannot take back his vow.
Now, Jephthah's daughter willingly submits, but asks to mourn her virginity for two months.
And after that, verse 39 says that Jephthah, quote, did with her according to his vow that he had
made.
Scholars debate whether Jephthah actually sacrificed his daughter.
Those who doubt it argue that his daughter didn't mourn her life,
but her virginity. And they suggest that instead of being sacrificed,
she was devoted as a virgin for special service to the Lord. But when you understand Jephthah,
it makes sense why she would have warned her virginity. The name Jephthah means he opens.
And many interpreters think that it originally expressed a hope that the Lord would open a womb,
a heritage, an inheritance.
Chapter 11 verse 34 is emphatic. that Jephthah's virgin daughter is his only child.
So
the man whose vow was meant to secure the inheritance he had lost ends up by fulfilling that vow,
bringing his own family line to an end.
Jephthah is a genuinely tragic figure.
Besides cutting off his own legacy, Chapter 12, verse 7 shows that his tenure as a judge was the
shortest of all the judges, only six years. And Jephthah's deliverance of Israel was only partial.
Although he defeated the Ammonites, the Philistines continued to oppress Israel.
And unlike the previous cycles, there is no statement that the land...
rest.
So, Jephthah's transactional behavior did not obtain God's covenant blessing.
That's
not the end of the story.
As a testimony to the riches of God's grace,
Jephthah is listed among those in Hebrews 11, among those who are said to be heirs.
According to the promise, those who, although strangers and exiles on earth,
desire a better country, and for whom it is said that God has prepared for them a city.
So despite his serious moral flaws, the Lord did open a way for Jephthah.
Earlier I told you, that there are three judges in today's passage.
But there's actually one more.
Remember that in chapter 11, verse 27, in his message to the Ammonite king,
Jephthah himself recognizes that the Lord is the judge.
He knew that the Lord is the true deliverer of God's people.
And thanks to the Lord,
we don't go like the daughters of Israel to lament a tragic and futile sacrifice.
No, we come to the Lord's table every week to remember that there is a divine Father who in Love
gave his only son that Jephthah and all who believe might have life.
And there is a son. who kept the covenant on our behalf,
who willingly submitted to endure the cross and bear our sins in His body.
The gospel is not another transaction you make with God.
It is the announcement that Christ has already completed the only transaction
could save you. Indeed, Jesus paid it all.
Bow with me.
Father, in the book of Isaiah, you make your appeal. Come,
everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money,
come buy and eat.
Help us to rest in the fact. that our acceptance with you is not based on what we can offer,
but on the finished work of Jesus Christ alone.
Help us to stir up the grace of God that is in us and to love one another as you have loved us.
And because we are so prone to wonder, prone to leave the God we love,
Father, take our hearts and take and seal them. For your courts above, in Jesus' name,
amen.